Page:Christiaan Snouck Hurgronje - The Revolt in Arabia (1917).djvu/21

 4 good reasons for this, which we can pass over here. Still weightier were the reasons that influenced his successors in the administration of the theocracy of Islam from such a step. Mecca was far too remote from the then existing centres of civilisation to be a convenient vantage point for the world conquest considered by Islam as its appointed task, and as a capital from which to administer the empire which the first Caliphs were able to establish by force of arms. Even Medina seemed unsuited for the purpose, permanently. Then, when the Persian Empire, Syria, Egypt, North Africa, and Spain were subjected to Islam, Arabia, regarded politically, became a remote territory with a steadily decreasing significance.

The residence of the Caliphs was removed first to Damascus, later to Bagdad, where they remained established for five centuries—down to 1250